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Formed over 20 years ago by vocalist/guitarist Matt Harvey and drummer Col Jones (who left the band back in 2003), Exhumed is currently at one of their best moments. Over these 20 years of gore/death metal, the band faced many line up changes, but always releasing demos, splits and full length records. However, in 2005, sometime after ”Garbage Daze Re-Regurgitated” came out, the band stopped. Most fans didn’t know what had happened and were left hoping that one day Exhumed would return. After a 5 year break, Exhumed came back and recorded one of their best albums, ”All Guts, No Glory”, which received a lot of positive feedback from fans and media. I interviewed Matt Harvey and guitarist Wes Caley couple of hours before the band would play in Helsinki, Finland, to talk about the new record, the tour, future plans and horror movies.

Is this the first time for you guys in Helsinki?

Matt: Yeah this is the first time for us in Helsinki, we were in um…Oulu?

Yeah, last year, at JaloMetalli.

Matt: Yeah that was the only show we did in Finland up to this point. So this is the first time in the city, and we are pretty excited, it’s cool.

I noticed that you guys have been playing with Rotten Sound over Europe, so you got some familiar people here in Finland, right?

Matt: Yeah, unfortunately those guys are on Greece this weekend. (laughs) They are playing Greece and we are playing here so…

Wes: That’s right, I was gonna ask you earlier if they were coming to the show…

Matt: Vittu! (laughs) That’s the only Finnish word I know.

Pretty important word I guess. (laughs) So you guys have been promoting ”All Guts, No Glory” for almost a year now, and the cd has been out also almost a year, so is this the longest tour that Exhumed has been promoting a record?

Matt: Well, usually in the past we’d put out a record and wait like 6 months or even longer, and then tour, which is retarded.

Wes: Yeah, that doesn’t make any sense. (laughs) Who came up with that?

Matt: Col’s college schedule basically.

Wes: Ah…

Matt: Our drummer was going to college. So this has been the first record that honestly we were able to release an album and then immediately go on tour, and when we started we didn’t really know how much touring we were gonna do or how many offers were gonna be. We just kinda took it as it came, and the offers kept coming and then we got so busy to where it looked like we had this big hole from December until April because we had been touring so much we couldn’t work. So we basically decided that we needed to get something going for February – March, and that’s how we came up with the idea for this tour. This is like…I think we did four separate trips for festivals last year, and then we did the fall tour for a little over 2 weeks and now we’ve come back to do this tour, like 3 weeks, then a week in England and this show. Then we go home and we have a month long tour with Cannibal Corpse, then we have a 20 or 18 dates Canadian tour with Black Dahlia Murder, then a month off, then Obscene Extreme, then another US tour…is like a festival tour called Summer Slaughter. So it’s been like…and then we are fucking done! (laughs)

Wes: We need to have time to write another record.

Matt: Yeah, and at that point it’ll be like a year and two or three months since the record [”All Guts, No Glory”] has come out.

Wes: So it’ll be time to put out something, otherwise you are just touring for no reason really.

Matt: Totally.

Well, how’s the tour been so far? It’s been a lot of dates (laughs).

Matt: It’s been good, this leg has been really cool. The last European leg we did was ok, it was fun, but this run with Rotten Sound has been a bit stronger. I think we’ve been playing places that are better for us, like more Eastern European shows, and also just a little bit stronger package to offer the kids, coz in Europe there are so many tours and so many people…It’s like four death metal tours a week, it’s tough to put something together that makes a kid go like: ”Well, I’ll go spend my money on this, instead of this other tour or this other show, or I’ll wait two months to see these bands in a festival or whatever”…But I think it has been going good.

It must be pretty rewarding for you guys, I mean you guys had this 5 year break and now you guys are just playing non stop basically…(laughs)

Wes: Yeah, we didn’t plan on that. Actually what we were going to do was basically pick out the shows where we could have the most draw or opening for bands, or make the most amount of money in the shortest amount of time coz we all wanted to work, and we didn’t wanted to do it on the side. Then all this stuff came in, all of the sudden it was like now we are doing this sorta like for a living I guess, kinda…

Matt: It’s almost a living.

Wes: Yeah, almost. (laughs) It’s like in that grey area.

Matt: But it’s very much like we put out the record with the attitude of ”we’ll see what happens”, for better or for worse people seem to like it, and actually want for us to come and play, so we just keep doing that. (laughs)

Well, it must be pretty good coz you were away for such a long time and now you are back in full action.

Matt: Yeah, it’s definitely full action. I mean, it was really surprising to me that people actually wanted to see the band. I mean, there would be like you know…a couple of people here and there, die hard dudes that their idea of a fun Saturday night is putting on their patch jacket, going over to their friend’s house and pulling out obscure 7 inches (laughs). I knew that there would be those guys that wanna come see us, you know? Coz that’s what I do for fun with my nerdy friends, but the fact that there’s been…in the States anyways the band is bigger now than ever, which is really weird.

Wes: It’s kinda like the opposite of what we expected, coz you [Matt] were saying before that, I didn’t do any of the European tours before so, you were saying that those were better than the US back in the day so…

Matt: Yeah…

Wes: Now I think it’s the opposite, it’s kinda weird.

Matt: It’s been kinda nice actually because we used to complain when we’d do shows back home in California, like ”Fuck, why we are bothering doing this? Let’s just go to Germany or Canada or Japan or somewhere else and do way better shows.” Now it’s like the shows in the West Coast have been our best shows really since coming back. I mean, there’s been a lot of good shows, don’t get me wrong, like in Ostrava [Czech Republic], the last show with Rotten Sound was insane, the show in Hungary was insane…

Wes: Yeah, that was nuts.

Matt: You know a few other places as well, so it’s been good all the way around, but yeah in America the band is bigger than ever, so its…

Wes: It’s weird…

Matt: It’s cool, it’s good you know, it’s just a surprise. (laughs)

And you guys have been playing in new places coz for example Finland, Exhumed hasn’t been here…I mean last year it was the first time, now it’s the second time already. I also read that you were suppose to play in Brazil, but you had to cancel that…

Matt: Right…

Wes: Yeah, they didn’t give any work visa. When we went to the consulate they asked what we were doing, they found some paperwork that said that there’s a production company that we were going through and they went like ”Oh you lied to us, you are playing music there.” We were like ”Wow…ok, so what’s the big deal?”. They said ”Well, you don’t have the visa so, we can’t let you do it”. But even if they wouldn’t have had that paper, I still think they probably wouldn’t let us go there, or if they did, we could have gotten there on their soil, and then somebody checks something and they’d go like ”Oh you guys can’t come over here.” So what happened was that we didn ‘t have the right visas to work over there…

Matt: Yeah, basically the promoter applied for the improper visas, and the consulate found out about it, they were basically like: ”No, don’t come to our country.” Like: ”You have to leave. (laughs) You have to leave the building, please go away”. (laughs)

Wes: It didn’t go over too well…

Matt: No, they told they were going to ban me. (laughs)

Wes: It’s because Mike said that it was music and you said that we were tourists, or something like that…but that’s not the reason that…

Matt: Why all of the sudden was I applying for a tourist visa?

Wes: Right.

Matt: It was insane, it was one of those things where it’s not really lying, it’s just…

Wes: It’s not lying if you don’t say…

Matt: If you cheat on your girlfriend, and your girlfriend never asks ”Did you cheat on me?”.

Wes: Right. (laughs)

Matt: It’s like, she didn’t ask so I didn’t say anything. It was one of those kinda deals.

Are you guys gonna try to…maybe again there?

Matt: Yeah, I think we are gonna try to go there on September. That’s what we are looking at right now, so fingers crossed, seems like it’s gonna be a lot more together this time…

Wes: It seems like whenever we do a tour, we are learning new things. (laughs) Getting our shit together slowly, coz you never know what’s gonna happen, you never know what the airlines are gonna do, you don’t know what’s gonna happen in the venues. All kinds of stuff, so now were getting the hang of it, I guess a little bit…Obviously you [Matt] toured way more than me but I’m just saying…

Matt: Well, I also didn’t do it for 6 years…

Wes: Right.

Matt: I mean the way we used to tour was like lie to the rental van company and…

Wes: Which is really stupid…

Matt: And just get in the van and drive all around the country…

Wes: And hope that they don’t find out…

Matt: Drive, and drive with suspended licenses in foreign countries, all kinds of stupidity. So we are getting better, we don’t have a manager or anything, we are still very much a DIY band, which is cool but is also part of the reason why things are kinda (9.50)….sometimes. Especially because we are touring so much, it’s hard to be organized when you don’t have…like at home I have a computer, a printer, a scanner…

Wes: It’s like you don’t have the time logistically because another thing is that we all live far away from each other, you [Matt] and Mike live close by, I live in Arizona, and Rob lives in Orange County, which is four hours from you guys, so it’s kinda hard to plan stuff out when you got everybody all over the place.

Matt: And when you are retarded.

Wes: And we are also retarded so…(laughs)

Matt: It’s an adventure for sure.

Well, do you think this is the best or maybe one of the best moments for Exhumed?

Matt: Oh yeah, definitely. I think in a lot of ways, not only the shows have been getting better, the offers are better, business wise, and the last record that we did is the first one that I really like. On the other 3 [”Gore Metal”, ”Slaughtercult”, ”Anatomy is Destiny”] there are things that I like about them, but I also have some big problems about them. This one I was like ”Hey, we played good, it got recorded good”, so that happened on the same time, usually is one or the other, or neither. The first record is neither, the second one I like the production, but I don’t like the playing, on the third one the playing is better, but it’s still kinda goofy.

Wes: The other change too is that me and him are both melodic as far as playing solos, so that changes the sound. Mike Beams [former guitarist from 1998-2005] had a really cool style, but it was more like a Slayer, Suffocation, that’s definitely cool and it fits too…

Matt: I think now it’s more like together, it’s more like Judas Priest…

Wes: Yeah, classic metal, you know? (laughs)

Matt: I mean overall we are really stoked, like dealing with all day to day stuff…I don’t wanna sound like we are whining like ”Oh everything is fucked up.” It’s just like these are our adventures, you what I mean? Things have been rad, shows have been good, people seem to like the record, we like the record, and we got a new line up, like a full time line up now, whereas on the album it was Leon [del Muerte – vocals/bass] and Danny [Walker – drums] who were both busy with other bands. Now it’s like he have Mike Hamilton from Deeds of Flesh on the drums, we have Rob, who I used to play with in Gravehill, on bass, and for all the four of us this is our main band, this is what we are doing, so it really feels good. I mean, I think we are fucking powering full steam ahead , this is as full steam as we can get anyways, so it’s good. (laughs)

Speaking about the new record, on the cd there’s this really surprisingly personal liner notes from you [Matt], talking about what happened to the band during the break, and what caused the break as well. It was for me really surprising because before usually was [on the albums] ”Exhumed gives no fucking thanx!” (laughs). Then came this 4 page text, so did you feel like it was necessary to explain to the fans what happened to the band?

Matt: Well, it was kind of a thing that um…I knew that I wanted the album to have liner notes, originally my concept was to have a journalist or somebody to write them, you know? And not necessarily about that, but I just wanted to have some kind of liner notes because: a) I like to read lyrics and liner notes, and b) I think on this day and age of downloads and everything, the more quality you can put in the physical package, the better it is. The more incentive for somebody to buy it and hold on to it, you know what I mean? Because really the goal is to make a record that somebody wants to listen to in 10 years, somebody wants to take it out and go like ”Hey, check this out”.

Wes: Yeah, it’s like you know that they are gonna get downloaded, but if they download they are not gonna get all that cool shit in the booklet, so…Maybe they’ll just buy it because of that.

Matt: Right.

Wes: I know it seems silly, but that’s the way it is nowadays.

Matt: And it wasn’t so calculated, we just wanted to make something cool, because that’s what I enjoy about records, the fact it makes it more sell-able it’s great too. So I talked to Relapse and they said ”Yeah, you should definitely make some liner notes.”, I was like ”Why don’t we do it like this?”, but they said ”Why don’t you do it?”. I was like ”It’s kinda weird”…

Wes: I thought that was weird too when you told me that, I thought first ”What the hell?”.

Matt: Yeah, I was a little confused, so originally I kinda wrote up something that just talked about the writing process of the album and influences about the songs, yada yada…And they felt it was a little dry, so I wrote something…They kinda just said ”Why don’t you write like what happened, why did you break up, why are back”.

Wes: They wanted to be more personal.

Matt: Yeah, so I just took it like…if you saw a buddy or whatever and went like ”Dude, I haven’t seen you in years, fuck…this is what’s new with me. Hey man, cool.” So it was a little odd, but most people seem to like it, it was a trip.

Yeah coz when I read back then, that you guys were taking a break I wasn’t sure what was the reason. So now I understood better why and what happened back then so…I think for most people as well, that [the liner notes] was a really good bonus when you got the record.

Matt: For the people in the band obviously it’s a big deal to put a lot effort in it. But for everybody else, it’s just another band or whatever…For me, I really like to nerd out and learn a lot about my favorite bands. But there are also a lot of bands that I don’t care about, I don’t give a shit who’s in the band or not, who leaves or goes, or what happens, I’m just like ”Oh yeah, this record it’s pretty good or whatever.” So I felt really weird, like ”Oh yeah people really give a fuck about my life, there you go.” (laughs) So it felt a little odd, but I think it’s very in keeping with the fucking Facebook, internet sort of over share like world that we live in. (laughs)

Wes: Yeah, everything is a lot more personal now. We play a show and that’s on YouTube now, like an hour later.

Matt: Yeah, immediately.

Wes: It’s weird, it’s very personal…You can see everything you are doing on the fucking internet. And you didn’t even try to do shit, you know? (laughs) Like my friend hit me up and he’s like ”I just youtubed Exhumed and I just watched your show right now.” Dude, we just played like 3 hours ago. (laughs) What the fuck dude? It’s crazy.

Matt: Yeah, that’s the world that we are living in I guess, but anyway.

Speaking of this YouTube thing, connection with fans, obviously now people can see Exhumed live on their computers and everything. Have you thought about releasing a dvd? Even though considering this whole new age that we are living.

Matt: There’s a funny story, funny you should ask…Before we split up we were working on a dvd, that was the project that we were doing. Then the band broke up, so it just seemed kinda pointless. Before we split up we did a lot of interview with band members, past and present, we compiled all this footage, like from the early 90’s, when we were kids in high school through the last tour, all kind of different stuff. It was like…a little over half way done. Then when we got back together we were going to do it with Listenable over here in Europe, the same people that did our covers album, we revisited that conversation, then it was like ”The dvd market is so soft now because of YouTube, i’ts stupid to release this.” Can we do like an EP, like an audio plus dvd? Then it got into a situation with Relapse, they were like ”Well, you can’t really do that because of contract A and B.” Oh this is a fucking nightmare…Then I was like ”Well, do I give the dvd to Listenable in Europe, and Relapse in the USA?”. Then Relapse was ”We don’t really want it” and Listenable was ”We don’t want it either without this and that”. I was just like ”Ok…

Wes: Fuck it. (laughs)

Matt: We have another album left on our deal with Relapse, we’ll do that, then we are gonna sort it out this dvd thing that started 7 years ago in 2005. It’s just a fucking mess, I’m not a lawyer, I don’t even know, it’s just like ”Fuck”. So we need to come up with something that’s gonna satisfy, because we owe Listenable something, so it’s only fair for us to give them some sort of release. And in 2005, doing a dvd makes more sense that making one in 2012.

Wes: Was there any press about that? Like, do people know that was suppose to come out?

Matt: Some people do. Sometimes I’ve been talking about it on interviews.

Wes: Ah ok. Yeah, that’s old school man.

Matt: It’s just a mess, just a clusterfuck. (laughs)

Well, hopefully that comes out sometime, I mean the history of the band…It’d be interesting to know how it started and the band members, because you guys had a lot of band members, people like Ross [Sewage] from Impaled…I mean good line ups every time…

Matt: Most of them. (laughs) This one is good. Yeah, I mean we’ve couple of ideas, I don’t wanna say anything because we are focusing on the new album. If I say what we are thinking doing now, it can totally change, but we wanna put something that’s really cool, that represents the whole history, so we’ll see.

Wes: We’ll figure something out, I guess.

Matt: That’s our philosophy. (laughs)

Wes: Just roll it. (laughs)

Going back again to the liner notes, that you had to re learm your guitar playing style because you were obviously away for such a long time. But when it came to the recording, was it easier to come with the lyrics than with the music? What was an easier process for you?

Wes: Didn’t you do differently than before?

Matt: Yeah.

Wes: Lyrics later or something?

Matt: Yeah, I did all the…

Wes: Coz we wrote all the stuff like…He was still in Hawaii, and I was in Orange County and we were sending files back and forth, that’s how we wrote the record actually. So that makes sense that you wrote the lyrics later coz the music was already fucking done.

Matt: Well, you know…I think…

Wes: Except for ”I Rot Within” because I came up with the idea of like ”Open the Abscess Part Two”, which is a horrible name for a song. (laughs) So glad we didn’t use that.

Matt: It was a good spring board for the lyrics. I think we just focused on the music first, coz that’s the most important part, especially in death metal, no one can understand what you are saying anyway. For me it was like a process of couple of bits that I came up with, they weren’t shitty but they weren’t up to snuff for sure, and then Wes started writing. It just seemed like the more songs we each wrote, the more songs we came up with, they kept getting better, you know what I mean? In the past I wrote 85-90% of the music and then Mike would write a couple of songs in the end, whereas this time from the very begining Wes would send me a file, ”Oh here’s a song”, and I’d be like ”Wow this is fucking good”. Then I’d come up with something I thought could stand next to that, then it goes back and forth, and before we knew it we wrote 22 songs.

Wes: Yeah, it was almost half and half.

Matt: Well, except from the intro…It was half and half. The intro [”All Guts, No Glory”] is our old live intro that we used to play in 1996, something I wrote after high school.

Wes: And we still had other…I still had some songs, and I think you also had some songs that we didn’t even record. They weren’t even b-sides, they didn’t get on the record or as the bonus tracks. It was so much material it was crazy.

Matt: It was really cool because it had always been like the opposite. We had always been like we just learned the last song the day before we go to record, and the record is like 37 minutes. This time was like ”Here all the songs we have, the album is gonna be 35 minutes, we know that for a fact, we are not gonna make an hour long bullshit to bore the tits out of everybody. The record is 35 minutes, so how do we pair this down and just take the best songs that go best together?” Even when we got to the studio we didn’t know what was gonna be on the album and what wasn’t, which is kinda good because in that way you tried as hard as you could to make every song good.

Wes: And going back to that technology thing…Without the technology we have nowadays, and this goes along with all that YouTube shit and Facebook and whatever, without the technology to send files to whoever and wherever they are, we wouldn’t have got it done like that all. It would have taken like…

Matt: It would have been tedious making…

Wes: It would have never come out.

Matt: So yeah, we had all the music and then I started writing the lyrics. The lyrics were really hard because when I was like teenager and stuff, all I did was watch horror movies, you know that was my thing, and to think of cool ways to get people dismembered. (laughs) You know, I’m 36 now dude, I don’t really think about that, I don’t really watch horror movies and stuff anymore. But Exhumed, the band, is a gore metal band, and that’s what the band does, I’m not going to be like ”Oh I’m not into this”. I mean, I still love all the old classic and shit, it’s just that’s not what I’m thinking about it nowadays. So I was like ”Fuck, how am I going to come up with 16 different ideas?” (laughs)

Wes: Didn’t you have lyrics that were sort of metaphorically talking about other things?

Matt: Yeah. One of the songs we are playing tonight, ”Necrotized”, is really more about the consumption of tv and shit like that, basically rots your brain. Ike your mom always said ”Tv rots your brain”.

Wes: You are still talking about death, but it’s…

Matt: It’s more of an internal death, but it’s expressed…It’s all metaphors and everything. Even though somebody doesn’t give a shit about the message, they read a bunch of cool gory words and they are stoked. We don’t want to crawl around the ass and get too pretentious, you know.

[At this moment bassist/vocalist Robb Babcock comes in the room]

Matt: Hey bro, you can come in.

Robb: Smells musky in here.

Matt: Smells like men in here! (laughs)

You were talking that before you wrote lyrics based on horror movies, have you ever considered writing a conceptual album based on a movie or a specific thing?

Matt: Well, I think the next record is going to be more conceptual. ”Anatomy is Destiny” was kinda conceptual, loosely, I mean if you say that ”Ride the Lightning” or ”Master of Puppets” is a loosely conceptual and that the songs revolve around a theme…Like ”Anatomy is Destiny” was sort of like an existential thing, transcending this kind of existence precedes essence sort of an idea into a gore term. The new one is just songs about stuff. (laughs) But the next one I think it’s going to be like a little more…Again, not like story line like ”Abigail” or something, but all the songs will around a central theme. I don’t wanna say too much about it because I might write all the songs and go like ”That was a stupid idea”. (laughs)

Wes: Well, I’m pretty sure that’s how is going to end like because some of the songs that I’m writing are a slight bit more experimental, using a bit of effects and stuff, which Exhumed really didn’t do before. The sound it’s not going to change at all, just a little spice in there, a little weird stuff that could end being like more conceptual…

Matt: Yeah, something that could write itself into something more narrative or whatever. We are all fans of other kind of music and couple of songs Wes and I have been working on have a few hints of Godflesh or something like that…

Wes: It’s not like we are going to have clean vocals or shit like that. (laughs)

Matt: I mean, we’ll still 100% Exhumed, but it’s just going to be a little different flavour, you know? Still the same ice cream, but instead of chocolate chunks you get whatever…caramel swirl. (laughs)

Wes: Kinda like that.

Matt: I think everything turns into ice cream. (laughs)

Wes: More nutty.

Matt: Yeah, more nutty. (laughs)

Going back to that horror movie thing, I’m a huge horror movie fan, especially from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s…

Matt: That’s the best.

Obviously when I saw the lyrics on the Exhumed’s albums I was like ”This is great, this is my area”. So which are your favorite horror movies?

Matt: Growing up I…In grade school, in the 5th grade, my entire goals in life were: buying comic books, getting somebody’s parents to rent a non rated or a R rated horror movies, and stealing pornography. (laughs) That was like…they were my 3 goals when I was 10 or 11 years old. My favorite horror movies were always like the ones that were kinda funny, like I love ”The Toxic Avenger”…

Wes: Yeah, that shit is good…

Matt: ”Evil Dead 2” and when I saw ”Re Animator” I was in 6th grade and when the dude puts his severed head between the chick’s legs I was ”I’m not exactly sure what you do when you put your head between a chick’s legs, but I know it’s awesome and I know that’s the best thing I have seen in my entire life”. (laughs) I think Exhumed has a sense of humour, whether people get it or not, we are always very tongue and cheek, you know?

Wes: Yeah, I don’t see how somebody can take the lyrics seriously for something like ”Forged in Fire”, that’s ridiculous…

Matt: I hope really not dude. (laughs) But as I got older, I really got into ”The Beyond”, ”Gates of Hell”, ”Zombie”, then I went through an Argento phase, the whole thing on ”Slaughtercult”, with the shattered mirror, it’s trying to be Dario Argento. I still love all those horror movies, I think you nailed when you said horror movies from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, that’s one of the reasons why I don’t watch horror movies anymore because they don’t make good horror movies anymore.

Yeah I know.

Matt: And the movies in thee 80’s were so much more violent. You watch like ”Street Trash” and violent shit, and there’s an endless list of great movies, and even if the movie sucks there’s that one cool scene where the dude’s head blow up or whatever. In the 70’s you know, ”Cannibal Ferox”, it’s sort of a bummer when see the animals getting killed but then in the end they cut off the guy’s dick, it’s so over the top…

Robb: ”Cannibal Holocaust” was way better.

Matt: It’s just like ”Fuck”. (laughs)

Wes: Even like ”Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, there’s no music and it’s super scary. There’s no sound and all of sudden ”Bam!”, somebody is dead.

Matt: And then ”Texas Chainsaw 2” is like the coolest sequel because…

Wes: Oh yeah. (laughs)

Matt: It goes on a completely opposite direction…

Robb: It’s goofy.

Wes: It’s a comedy.

Matt: It’s liked doing ”South of Heaven” after ”Rainning in Blood”. What everybody wants it’s like ”tap tap tap tap” [Matt makes fast drum pace] the whole time but they do it really slow. Horror movies nowadays…I mean, fuck…The chicks are hotter but aside from that they suck, they are just unwatchable.

And obviously the other thing that I think is that there’s too much CGI, it just kills off the the craft of actually making these movies…

Matt: Right. To me CGI is not disgusting, it’s great for super hero movies and science fiction, it’s perfect coz it’s in the realm of the imagination anyways, but it’s not scary unless it’s real. That’s why ”Hellraiser in Space” is just not scary. That’s just dumb. Unless you see an actual thing that’s spraying blood or some sort of actual fluid, there’s no connection. CGI is grea for ”Wow”, but not for ”Ugh!”.

Not to mention the remakes of all those 80’s and 70’s…

Wes: Absolutely terrible. Why do they even bother?

Matt: And not just horror…

Wes: Anything…

Matt: ”Clash of the Titans” or whatever, c’mon man…

Mike Hamilton: Or ”Conan”, how do you remake that? How you top ”Conan”? Leave it alone.

Matt: And between that and the ”GI Joe” and ”Transformer” movies it’s just like Hollywood is taking my entire childhood and wiping their ass with it.

Wes: And the other thing too is that this proves that this generation doesn’t have any output…

Mike: They are running out of ideas.

Wes: They don’t have any ideas left.

They have to go back and recycle everything.

Wes: But ruin it. They are doing double the damage because they are not putting anything good and they are going back and trashing the old shit.

Matt: the thing is that nobody ever comes up with an idea that’s totally new and original, you are always building on something that came before, but now they are not even like ”Oh hey I’m going to take this and put a new twist to it”. They are just ”Oh I’m just gonna do it again”.

Wes: Everything is about money now, there’s not a whole of art left.

Matt: The one cool thing about the video stores in the 80’s, they and these mom and pop video stores that were doing so little business, that a guy from Westrom Video could come in and say ”I got ’Horror High’ and ’Evil Dead 2’, ten other crappy movies and some soft porn. Tell you what, just put these titles in your video store and cut me a check”. Now that everything is gigantic, so corporatized, it’s a lot harder for the little guy to find a foot hole. The internet hasn’t caught up with full feature length movies yet, it works for music and that, everybody can be hurt by anybody but it’s not like for movies. The competition has been so narrow that it’s only corporate stuff and that’s it. So it’s kinda drag.

Quick thing, you talked about the gigs and the new record. Any specific dates on the new record or?

Matt: Our goal is to get into the studio by late October-November, so we can have it out late spring [2013], come over to Europe and some festivals and take it from there. Coz we did the last one in October-November of 2010 and it was out late spring for us to come over and do all the festivals, so we are trying to kinda repeat that.